If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Welcome to Mac-Forums! Join us to comment and to customize your site experience! Members have access to different forum appearance options, and many more functions.

1. It provides an easy way to partition your hard drive so Windows can be installed. The BC assistant can also be used to remove that partition if you should want to remove Windows later on.

2. The second reason is that it provides drivers for your Mac hardware that allows it to function properly with Windows.

Is there some reason why you don't want to use the Boot Camp assistant?

You can certainly partition your hard drive manually using Disk Utility and then boot your Mac with the Windows 7 DVD and install to the new partition you created. However, you would then need to install the drivers that Windows requires to operate properly.

You can always install Windows 7 in a VM instead. You have your choice of Parallels, Fusion, or the free VirtualBox.

BootCamp is a dual-boot solution. You will only be using 1 OS at a time. You will be able to use all of your RAM for Windows when you boot into it. I'm not sure why you think BC won't do that, but that's its purpose. That's far and away the best choice for creating a bootable Win7 partition on your Mac - trust us on this one. Please read the stickies at the top of the forum and print out the boot camp instructions before proceeding.